E
Everyman
I don't think it's too much of an exaggeration to say that the Jacob
situation is reaching crisis proportions for clc.
Just imagine the view a new poster gets of the group: he asks a
question, receives several answers of varying degrees of helpfulness,
and then somewhere along the line Jacob interjects an asinine comment
and the thread degenerates into a sprawling and acrimonious war of
words: people pointing out (for the nth time) why Jacob is wrong, while
he steadfastly refuses to admit any error in anything he says and at the
same time turns up the emotional heat with acerbic personal attacks on
the regulars here.
Look down a list of recent topics: thread after thread has been hijacked
by Jacob to promote one of his eccentric pet ideas about how C should be
"improved" by removing the essential traits that make it C; or
propaganda for his compiler; or a refusal to distinguish between C and
extensions in lcc-win32; or just plain unprovoked verbal aggression
against one of his bugbears (chief amongst them Richard Heathfield, even
though he hasn't posted a response to Jacob for months now).
The only roughly comparable situation in my experience was at sci.math a
few years ago, when a delusional crank called James Harris took over
lots of threads with claims to have an elementary proof of Fermat's Last
Theorem. That was resolved amicably: all parties (including Harris)
agreed that posts by and about Harris and his strange ideas would be
tagged JSH in the subject line, so that they could easily be filtered
out.
Unfortunately, while it would be obvious to anyone with a brain the size
of a cherry tomato that Harris's ramblings were nonsensical, in this
group there's a real danger that if no one corrects Navia then
non-experts might absorb even his more egregious errors. The more one
reads Jacob's posts, the more one realizes how little he knows,
understands or cares about the C language, but at first glance he does
manage to project the image of someone speaking with authority,
especially because of his wretched compiler project.
The best solution I can currently think of is this: someone could create
a webpage describing (completely rationally, with no emotive language)
why Jacob's unique view of C is not to be trusted, and explaining how
new readers can killfile him in popular newsreaders. Then an automated
bot could post a followup to each of Jacob's posts with a link to this
URL. This would allow regular posters to safely killfile Jacob: and if
no one is reading his insults then no one will feel compelled to respond
to them: and all in all the signal-noise ratio of the group will jump.
Do other people think this might be a workable solution? Or is there a
better idea?
situation is reaching crisis proportions for clc.
Just imagine the view a new poster gets of the group: he asks a
question, receives several answers of varying degrees of helpfulness,
and then somewhere along the line Jacob interjects an asinine comment
and the thread degenerates into a sprawling and acrimonious war of
words: people pointing out (for the nth time) why Jacob is wrong, while
he steadfastly refuses to admit any error in anything he says and at the
same time turns up the emotional heat with acerbic personal attacks on
the regulars here.
Look down a list of recent topics: thread after thread has been hijacked
by Jacob to promote one of his eccentric pet ideas about how C should be
"improved" by removing the essential traits that make it C; or
propaganda for his compiler; or a refusal to distinguish between C and
extensions in lcc-win32; or just plain unprovoked verbal aggression
against one of his bugbears (chief amongst them Richard Heathfield, even
though he hasn't posted a response to Jacob for months now).
The only roughly comparable situation in my experience was at sci.math a
few years ago, when a delusional crank called James Harris took over
lots of threads with claims to have an elementary proof of Fermat's Last
Theorem. That was resolved amicably: all parties (including Harris)
agreed that posts by and about Harris and his strange ideas would be
tagged JSH in the subject line, so that they could easily be filtered
out.
Unfortunately, while it would be obvious to anyone with a brain the size
of a cherry tomato that Harris's ramblings were nonsensical, in this
group there's a real danger that if no one corrects Navia then
non-experts might absorb even his more egregious errors. The more one
reads Jacob's posts, the more one realizes how little he knows,
understands or cares about the C language, but at first glance he does
manage to project the image of someone speaking with authority,
especially because of his wretched compiler project.
The best solution I can currently think of is this: someone could create
a webpage describing (completely rationally, with no emotive language)
why Jacob's unique view of C is not to be trusted, and explaining how
new readers can killfile him in popular newsreaders. Then an automated
bot could post a followup to each of Jacob's posts with a link to this
URL. This would allow regular posters to safely killfile Jacob: and if
no one is reading his insults then no one will feel compelled to respond
to them: and all in all the signal-noise ratio of the group will jump.
Do other people think this might be a workable solution? Or is there a
better idea?